


Pass/Repeat

by KandyKitten



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, In a way, Other Worlds, post-The Dark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KandyKitten/pseuds/KandyKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The tower was his life and it had cost him half a lifetime to find it the first time he started to search. Now, while he walked up the stars to the very last room, half a lifetime passed. Behind the unfound door, it was the life of Jake, Eddie and Susannah Toren." And when he starts over, so do they. This is how they passed over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pass/Repeat

 

The tower did not store Roland's life, but it represented his life, it's rooms and stairs marked from Roland's memories, the touch of his hands and the soles of his boots as much as Roland's mind was marked, carved into the form of the tower.

The Tower and Roland's life were one and, making his way to the very last room and his destiny, he realized that he had always known this fact.

What he didn't know – and would never know, either – was what happened from the moment he stepped through the entrance door to the moment he was dragged through the one that bore his name on it.

The tower was his life and it had cost him half a lifetime to find it the first time he started to search. Now, while he walked up the stars to the very last room, half a lifetime passed. Behind the unfound door, it was the life of Jake, Eddie and Susannah Toren.

1

It was a good life, that was most important and what should be said first. It was not a perfect life, it had bad moments and they knew sorrow, but it also held a lot of joy and luck and happiness and love. All in all, nobody could expect more. Nobody could wish for more.

That was until the cursed year, the year of 99, Eddie Toren thinks.

2

If there was one thing they regretted, then it was that they did not have children, even though that was not true, because they had had one.

In 1999, Susannah had become pregnant and it was in that winter of '99 that their luck, slowly but as inevitable as an avalanche, turned. It was not until the summer of '01 that it would become truly bad, but here, in the cursed year of '99, it started.

Susanna gave birth on a cold day late in autumn, gave birth to a boy. She had wanted to call it either Arthur or Roland – both names have a meaning to her that she cannot explain, not even to Eddie, who has the same feeling in a way – but they didn't have to decide in the end because the child is beautiful, it has a birthmark at his right foot, a bush of black hair and the bluest eyes, but it also is a stillborn.

She knew it before they told her. She knew it from the beautiful-terrible perfume of roses that she smelled with every breath even though there were none, knew it by the noises that repeated over and over in her head, a strange, high whine

_(sounds Hawaiian, doesn't it)_

and, maybe, chimes.

She was crying soundless tears, salty on her sweat-covered lips, before the doctor gives her the news and she lost hope before they stopped to try reanimating her boy, Roland-Arthur-maybe Eddie-Toren.

Eddie, who had neither smelled the roses nor heard the whine or the chimes – not his time, not yet – knew it before the doctor spoke, too, but he knew it from the look his beloved wife gave him.

3

Eddie had always been handsome, kind of cute with his slightly shaggy hair and his hazel eyes and even though he was not muscular, he always looked slender and healthy.

Now, in September three years after the miscarriage, Eddie is not more than a living mummy with his sickly white complexion and the now brittle, dull hair on the top of a head that sits on a body skinny like dry sticks. A body that had not left the bed for two month now.

He had wanted to get up at first, but by now, the will had vanished.

Eddie had been spouting sudden, blinding migraines for a few months and in January 2001, he had finally gone to see a doctor. A lot of tests had followed, so many that Eddie was feeling very uncomfortable very soon and it had showed that he had every right to. The diagnosis was very clear and very bad: A tumor in his brain, too big to be removed.

Not two weeks later, they started the first of an endless row of therapies.

And from that moment on, their luck had turned, turned very slowly but very brutally indeed.

Laying on the bed that would become his deathbed very soon, Susannah sitting at his side, humming a melody that sounded kind of familiar, very familiar, really, Eddie Toren remembers.

4

It started with Boy, Jakes beloved dog. It was a good animal, a bastard, but with wonderful, silky fur, beautiful eyes and a husky bark, surprisingly deep for a dog his size. He was intelligent, too, smarter than every dog any of them had ever seen and he loved Jake, loved him deeply. Sometimes, Eddie swore it sounded _'like this damn beast was trying to say his name, and I swear, sometimes he even succeeds'_.

But, speech or no speech, Boy had always been obedient until he suddenly wasn't anymore. He was an old dog when it happened, but somehow, it made the accident even worst.

One Sunday in August of 2001, as they walked past a construction ground – Central Positronics putting up some new bureau building – Boy suddenly freaked out.

Barking frantically, almost hysterically, he ripped the leash out of Jake's hands and stormed straight over the street, narrowly avoiding to be hit by a car that severed wildly when dodging the animal. He squeezed through the fence surrounding the construction site, jumped over the edge and then the agitated barking suddenly stopped.

They followed the dog as fast as they could, but it was too late. Boy had jumped right onto the steel skeleton that would support the basement later and he had impaled himself on one of the bars.

Jake was horrified. Already crying and calling Boy's name, the young man climbed over the fence himself and then down to the dog. Boy opened his strange eyes, the golden ring shimmering. He arched his elegant neck towards Jake's tear-streaked cheek, opened his slender, black muzzle and gave one last bark

_(Ake!)_

one of those barks that sounded as if he tried to say his owner's name and then it was over.

5

Maybe it was sadness, maybe it was just coincidence that it happened so soon after, but Jake was the next one to leave their little family.

It was an accident, just one of those things that happened every day. Jake was coming home from buying groceries and either he did not see he red light or maybe he just stumbled or

( _or was pushed)_

or something else, whatever made people run in front of cars.

Whatever made Jake cross the street while the light was red and the cars were coming, it was the last thing he ever did in this life. Right when he left the sidewalk, a deep-blue Takuro Spirit sped past the corner, a small man in an equally blue suit behind the wheel, windows down and a rock-song – Paint It Black – blaring.

That thing had always stuck Eddie as especially strange, the man had absolutely not looked like a man who would listen to a Stones song, not in the car or anywhere else, but be that as it may, it had been the song playing when the huge chrome grille hit Jake.

The impact sent him and his groceries flying onto the concrete, right in front of the wheels, arms splayed, and the Stones had been wrong, the concrete was not painted black but in a lively red when the sheer weight of the car crushed Jake's ribcage, sending a jet of blood out of his mouth and squeezing his insides out as warm, chunky pudding that mingled with equally squished oranges and tomatoes, creating crazy, ugly, half-colors.

Colors that Eddie is sure he will never forget again.

There had been a lot of hysteric screaming, vomiting and dropping bags, the driver crawled out from behind the wheel, uttered a horrified scream and bubbled a stream of apologies before fainting, dipping his face right into the mess that had been Eddie's little brother not quite thirty seconds ago.

EMTs finally carried both of them away – one hooked to machines, the other one in a plastic back – but it was long until the last bits of blood were gone from the street and even longer for him and Susannah to stop crying when they accidentally put one plate too many onto the table at weekends.

6

Eddie leaves this world at the end of December.

He has felt tired all day, and now, at afternoon, the winter's sun creating warm lights and shadows on his hollowed, aged face, he feels himself falling asleep. He is not sure what tells him that this sleep will be his final one, but he knows.

Susannah sits next to him – this woman he had dreamed of and finally met in reality, a homeless stranger, cultivated, beautiful. He remembers he has loved her even before setting eyes on her, he remembers the heavy thing she dropped – a revolver? Had it been one? – that he never asked about, the smell of grass and sand and roses, a choir from somewhere behind her, saying something

( _commala_ )

that he didn't understand, her strange clothes, her strange vehicle…their life, their love, their luck.

He wants to say something to her, but he lacks words, settles for a smile. She smiles back and takes his hand and Eddie knows he doesn't need to say anything.

"I know," she says, squeezing his hand. Then, she begins to hum, a folk song that he knows he knows, he just doesn't remember where he's heard it, but then, it's not important any longer. His eyes fall close and he smells something soft and spicy and warm, and the smell carries him away to a dream, a field of blood roses.

It should be scaring, death, but there is a voice. It sounds like Jake, sounds like two men that Eddie knows but doesn't remember, telling him

_(there are more worlds than these)_

that he doesn't have to be scared.

7

What happens to Susannah isn't so much death as it is…a _passing_.

It happens two month after Eddie has finally passed away in his sleep with her sitting at his side, blanketed by the smell of the flowers at his bedside, humming her favorite song, the one she has sung in a karaoke bar maybe an hour before they made love for the first time, the song she has sung on the first morning as married couple and many many times after…and before

_(in her real life)_

in her past life, the life she can only remember in hazy pictures, as if she had not had a life before that day in the zoo.

And she is right with that, even though she does not know.

Susannah Toren's life began as she threw away the revolver she has, by now, forgotten, began with the first words Eddie said to her, and if that is where it began, then here it ends.

They – meaning the doctors and the nurses – say losing her husband, the only thing she had left, has broken her. It is true, but not entirely: Susannah is not broken, she is _splintered_ , splintered into fragments that, even though they exist on different planes, are still one. Fragments that see more, see more planes of existence, and all to the soft chiming smell of perfect roses.

What got her hospitalized was a suspected depression, manifesting itself in sudden, absolute withdrawal, the unwillingness of participating in this big game called life.

She has no one left, but she was no poor woman. Susannah Toren ends in a bright, airy mental ward with a very well reputation and doctors who are surprisingly advanced in the treatment of mental sicknesses, far past electroshocks and lobotomy.

They treated her well for two month, that elderly black lady, who sometimes still responds, but no matter what they do, it is not enough.

The last two weeks of her life, she does not respond to anyone or anything. She sits in her bed, sometimes stands up to walk to her chair – the one she will die in – to stare out of the window. She eats and drinks when they leave the tray in the room, but her condition worsens and nobody knows how to stop it.

Susannah slips through their fingers like water.

The nurse who finds her, a very friendly young thing who has just moved in with her boyfriend, John-call-me-Johnny Marinville, is sad – she liked that women somehow – but not shocked. She calls the doctors, who can do nothing more than to declare her dead, call for the coroner and leave. She leaves, too, but turns in the door to have a last look on the women.

Susannah Toren sits in her chair with her hands folded in her lap. The light illuminating her face cannot hide the silver strands in her hair, but it can hide the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, the lines on her forehead. It makes her face almost youngish. It is eerie and beautiful all the same.

Sometimes, she said to her best friend, "It is as if she would just…slowly slip into another world. As if her soul would go somewhere else." Now, she thinks _: I hope you are in the world where you wanted to be._

It is a stupid thought and she scolds herself for it, but at the same time, it is a frightening thought. She shudders when she leaves.

Later, she tells her boyfriend: "She just passed over into another world" hoping he will understand that. He understands it as: "She has not suffered.", but that is not what she _meant_. Not at all.

She will never know how close to the truth she got.

8

When Eddie dies, it is not the end. He dies, falls asleep – and at the same time, he wakens.

He is at two places at once. He is lying in a bed, holding the hand of his wife, is dying, his eyes have just closed…but it can't be, because his eyes are open and he is standing, standing in an airport, waiting for his flight to be called, and he is very much alive. Not healthy, maybe, but not dying either.

He is two persons at once, with two memories, two lives lived, but one of those seems to come _forward_ while the other _retreats_ and he… He remembers.

He remembers Eddie Dean, the man he really was, before he became Eddie Toren. He remembers Henry, the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie, remembers Balazar. He remembers John "Jake" Chambers, a young body with a gunslinger's mind. He remembers Oy, the intelligent, unfailingly loyal Bumbler. He remembers Odetta/Detta/Mia, and the wonderful woman composed of all three of them. He remembers Roland, the Gunslinger, with the mauled hand and the blue eyes,

(the same eyes their baby had – what baby?)

he remembers heroin, remembers the wonderful-terrible effect, remembers that he needs it right now

he remembers past and present and future, and all at the same time.

And then, right before the memories all clash together and erase themselves, only leaving those that lead up to him standing in an airport with cocaine packed under his arms, Eddie has an epiphany.

Roland screwed up…or, maybe, and this is an even more terrible thought because it means they will never escape, he found the only way how to preserve all universes from being destroyed. They have gone this way before, he has gone this way before, dozens, hundreds of times: Eddie Dean, The Prisoner, becoming a gunslinger in Midworld, married to Susanna Holmes, surrogate brother to Jake, beating Blain the Mono, seeing the Rainbow Gate, fighting the Wolves, and then, finally, shot in Agul Siento, shot after the fight is over…he remembers seeing all worlds then…Dandelo, the Roses, _commala_ , the Tower, Eddie Toren, real brother to Jake, a good job, a good wife and peaceful, good life, cancer, death…then, junkie-kid Eddie Dean in an airport again.

And he knows it is the truth. He knows that is why he could fight even naked, was well with the gun and the knife, why he could ride just fine at first try, because his actual first try was centuries behind him, and he knows he will have to go this way again and again and again, because Ka is a wheel and even when it looks as if a wheel is going forward, in fact all it does is going round.

And then, it is over.

Eddie Dean stands in an airport, feeling a little confused. A spell of dizziness has just passed, one of those that had him feeling as if he was detached from the world, just watching it from behind a pane. Seeing through things, even. He thinks he heard some kind of folk-song just now

( _come-come-commala_ )

a strange melody, ear-splintering but loaded with a familiar beauty all the same; but maybe, it came from somebody's headphones. He also thinks he smells something, something fresh and sweet and terrible. He thinks it could be flowers.

He thinks it could be roses.

And then, Eddie shakes off the strange feeling (it's luck he didn't faint with the packages under his armpits), and focuses on the problem at hand. By the time he is in the gangway, he has forgotten about the dizziness.. When he sits down, he has forgotten about chants and smells. When the plane had risen and the stewardess asks him if he wants anything, all he remembers is that he needs a fix and that he has to get the drugs through the customs.

Eddie orders a gin and tonic – probably not the best idea to go through New York Customs drunk, and he knows once he got started, he would keep on going – but he has to have _something._

_When you got to get down and you can't find an elevator,_ Henry had told him once, _you got to do it any way you can. Even if it's only with a shovel._

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Because I don't think there's ever been a book that made me depressed in all the right ways like The Dark Tower did, and I couldn't get that idea out of my head.
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Love, KandyKitten

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Pass/Repeat [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282459) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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